Bearing Witness: Black Lives Matter Protests as Media, and Mediated, Event

The mobile-phone footage of the May 2020 killing of unarmed African-American man George Floyd by a white police officer triggered a wave of protests in the United States and around the world, while also marking a new development in the evolution, and effectiveness, of citizen journalism. As Steven Aoun argues, the democratisation of reportage enabled by eyewitness recording has destabilised traditional media credibility hierarchies and reoriented societal power dynamics – albeit with not-always-expected outcomes.

Additional keywords:
Derek Chauvin, Amy Cooper, Christian Cooper, Rodney King, LA Riots, Arab Spring, Occupy, Colin Kaepernick, Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations, Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse